I've just read information from the various manufacturers (some of the SMPTE require $) with different standards - you have Sony's NMI, NewTek's NDI, TICO (which seems to have the most backers with Grass Valley, Ross, Ikegami) and AIMs.
Edit
: I should state that part of my reasoning for being cautious is that in addition to being a young technology a lot of its single vendor centric. What I'm saying is that it's not like the big iron where you could connect anything from any vendor with an SDI output and in the right format.
Indeed. The so called industry 'plug-fests' will be interesting !
There's a good summary of the choices here
http://www.ibc.org/hot-news/will-ip-sink-or-swim-on-a-lack-of-standards
And this (quite old now) Sony White Paper gives a good overview of what IP offers (and challenges !) over SDI
https://www.xilinx.com/publications/prod_mktg/applications/sonys-ip-live-production-technology.pdf
The one thing that kind of confuses me as some articles on TVTechnology and others have implied that some or all of the IP production traffic will run with the regular building's IT infrastructure (VOIP, Internet, Computers etc.) while others have not.
Depends what you mean by 'infrastructure'. If you mean cabling and apps bay rooms - then yes.
However most broadcast installs will use a mix of split physical networks and VLANs to keep 'business' IT (basic connectivity for office PCs), VOIP (usually on separate VLANs to PCs), broadcast post-gear (desktop edits, graphic workstations moving video around as files), broadcast video (SDI over IP - which is usually 10GigE rather than 1Gig and using real-time protocols) and broadcast control (which is the control network for stuff like routers, up-/down-converters, PGs, multiviewers, colour correctors, networked IP KVMs for remote control of devices with PC-style user interfaces) etc.
There can be bridges enabled between these networks - say by implementing shared access to storage (so business IT can access the same networked storage as the post-prod IT systems to allow easy sharing of media) - but the core infrastucture is usually kept as physically and virtually as separate as it can be to increase robustness.
You'll also often find totally isolated (in both physical and logical terms) local networks for some equipment - say connecting a VM mixer top to a crate. (Though in some installs this will be on a broadcast network - so you can upload/download clips and stills to the VM)
Now we're pumping HD-SDI level uncompressed video across networks, you are in the realms of separate, much higher spec, cabling, patches, switches etc. to that required for office PCs and Phones (many of which are still 100Mbs let alone 10GbE) It's still really common to see an office PC connected to a VOIP phone, and then the VOIP phone connected to a floorbox for network connectivty. The PC and Phone are on different VLANs but share a physical connection back to the patch and switch. The inbuilt switch in the phone is often 100Mbs only.
